


Samsara

by Shamu



Category: New Dangan Ronpa V3: Everyone's New Semester of Killing
Genre: F/M, rating is likely to increase within the next couple of chapters, take care, the incest will be explicit and is central to this work
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-01
Updated: 2018-11-01
Packaged: 2019-08-14 10:30:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,378
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16490861
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shamu/pseuds/Shamu
Summary: She's been dead longer than she's been alive, and the days grow weary. She longs for something more, for connection that she long thought impossible for someone like her to have. The world revolves, and he is still wandering.This is an AU where the killing game did not occur, but their memories/backstories are considered true. Korekiyo is not a serial killer as I felt it would not fit into the scope of this story. He remains a very morally ambiguous character.This is my first draft for Nanowrimo, so expect updates & rough writing near daily.** on hiatus until Nov 17, updates will continue through December **





	Samsara

**Author's Note:**

> I'm doing it! I'm doing Nanowrimo! Any feedback is most appreciated, particularly as this is very much a first draft & I would love to polish it up over time. 
> 
> As per usual, I am no expect - but any folklore I include will be real. I do not condone everything these character discuss. & I am going to be very, very tired.

**CHINA** \- AUGUST  
  
Here, close to the roof of the world, he lay dying under the sweltering canopies. 

Hushed breathing barely scratched the humid atmosphere. Birds crowed and chimed in foreign whistles that refuted melody or any sense of music. Insects, frogs, creatures of all descriptions hummed and buzzed and croaked in the shallow lamplight; so alive was this jungle that he could already feel his decaying body recycled into them, reborn as part of them.   
  
A croaking, humming, buzzing thing. A whirring, chirping, calling creature. Each and every thing proclaiming so proudly, so loudly that it was alive. A celebration of this existence. A rousing speech. A roar that would deafen him, and soon - surely, very soon, be the roar that he drifted off into. Like sleeping on a rainy day. Like meditating beneath the waterfall.  
  
Like sucking air from a ventilator beneath the empty hospital glare. 

His lip trembled desperately against his mask, and he ripped the leather from his face without hesitation.   
  
“ _Korekiyo. You must not give up. We must never waver. Get up. Keep walking. The end does not await, not yet.”  
_

A whirl of well practiced fingers, and the mask was slid back over his nose. Like a brief rush of oxygen, he inhaled the honeyed air.  
  
“Sister… yes. You’re right. Of course, but… I fear my knee is broken, and without the use of my leg, I fear that walking may prove to be rather _difficult_.”  
  
The mask removed, the air tasted fresher, sweater, heavier. For every unconstrained breath, she thanked him.  
  
“ _If you have time for cheek, then you have time to think_.”  
  
But he had already thought. And he had already struggled. And he had already tugged himself up through the scrub, and crawled precariously over mud, and tumbled once again down a covered ravine. He was lost - well and truly lost, in one of the most remote stretches of earth that would ever exist. 

And some part of him, in this strange and vibrant place, wanted only to wrap himself in her embrace. To quietly dissolve into the thicket, to finally become one with that blanket of infinite green and purple mist, to give themselves over to the gentle vibrating hum of the universe.   
  
But in truth, that part of him was very small.  
  
Everything else within his body seized, denied, fought. 

“ _Come on. Do you remember when I had my first surgery? When they had to resuscitate me? When they cracked my ribs open from pushing so hard? Did I complain, even once, sweet Korekiyo?”_  
  
The wailing of her machines, the fumbling of the doctor’s hands, her eyes that became his eyes - wide as golden fishes. Were those her memories? Were they his? Had she even been conscious to experience them? Ah… such wonderful insights, these things that can only be obtained from freeing your mind.  
  
“No, Sister. You did not complain. Though, I suspect the morphine may have had its hand in helping you. Perhaps your eyes are keen enough to pick out any poppies near by?”  
  
But, before she could answer - with the mask still slid down their neck, a child’s voice suddenly sang through the jungle.  
  
“Who are you talking to?”

She stared, wild eyed, lips half open.   
  
“Is there anyone else, or is it just you?”  
  
The child, the girl, she had wide, golden eyes. A bright face. A confident smile that she wore even now as she spat out simple mandarin.  
  
This was the first person who had ever spoken to her. She trembled, the pain in her knee encapsulating her whole body. But she was no stranger to pain, and she was happy to drown in it. The extraordinary sensation of being alive, of surfacing through the suffering. She had to remember that, she had to - even as his hands reached up to embrace her, to encourage her. How funny. She could face death with a grin, but a child? She could only give the shallowest of frowns.  
  
“ _Are you afraid?_ ” She asked in nasal, hesitant mandarin. It was convenient, yes, it truly was, that skills could now be shared between them.  
  
“Afraid of what?” 

  
_“Afraid of me._ ”  
  
And that delightful creature, that glittering girl - she just let out a laugh, and smiled with every inch of her wide face.  
  
She had never made someone else laugh before. The tingling sensation began in her stomach and then roared across her cheeks. It had not intended to be a joke, she thought, but she quickly swallowed that with the desire to be accepted.  
  
And then the girl was gone - disappeared, just like that, a mirage into the trees. 

“ _Korekiyo._ ” 

She whispered, hours later, lamplight barely flickering over her face. Above, the canopy had been replaced by thatched roof and vaulting beams of refined wood. The groaning of the forest had been replaced by the distant clacking of human voices and the crackling of a fire. The overpowering smell of a world festering with life, everything mating and blooming and killing and singing instead replaced with the single solid smell of roasting meat.   
  
“Yes, Sister?”  


They were saved.

“ _I want her.”_

Those wide, curious eyes. Her sallow, twisted lips that grazed her effervescent smile. That mischievous laugh that had rang out when she had left and rang out again when she returned.   
  
“Wha-“  
  
“ _I want her as my daughter._ ” 

The world groaned, and his throat tightened - fingers flexing towards the mask, but before he could slip it over her mouth, she continued to speak.   
  
“ _We are getting older, Korekiyo. Do you not feel it, too? That time may soon run out, and we will be left with nobody but ourselves.”_  
  
And her longing, her loneliness - these things he felt in indescribable detail, swelling up more vividly than the pain that still screamed from his knee.  
  
“… I would not mind, Sister, if that was to be our lot. Our love, this love, there is nothing I would not sacrifice for it. You agree, right? It is why you chose to return to live within the confines of my body. So that we might always be, no matter the cost.”  
  
“ _But,”_ she whispered, knowing full well that his words were wrapped in lies. He tried to hide that feeling, that squirming, slippery feeling - but she knew the shape of loneliness, even under dark water. He desired more than this, they desired more than this. “ _Would having another in our lives… would that not be a more complete expression of our love_?” 

He laughed, then, surprising her.

“So love exists purely for reproductive success, a cross-cultural phenomenon that drives positive and consistent development in children sired. Is this what you believe, Sister?”   
  
She rolled away from him, but such a feat was impossible, her eyes narrowing into the darkness.  
  
“ _No… and you know that is not true. However, if she had not come to us, then. Well. I expect that we would be observing the rest of this tale from somewhere above the mountains, laughing at our own ugly fates._ ”

She paused.   
  
“ _I… felt something when I looked at her, Korekiyo. Something I have not felt before. Like… like I could be complete. Like this gaping hole inside of me…_ ” 

She touched her chest, her eyes clouding.   
  
“… We don’t even know her name.”  
  
_“I know.”_  
  
“She represents something symbolic to you. Something deeper. Something I think we would be better discussing.”  
  
_“I know.”_  
  
“We were delirious, dying. It is these coincidences that are the fuel for religious experiences, a phenomenon that you are experiencing now. I would think it interesting, a curiosity, and ask to observe you without interference - if the consequences of it did not threaten to destroy everything we have.”  
  
She hummed, as though vaguely agreeing - but shook her head when he offered to remove the mask. He sensed tiredness from her, a weariness that went beyond the spiked tea they had been offered hours before.  
  
Something had planted itself in her, a wild thought, as tangled and as tall as the trees that loomed and pushed themselves against this ungodly mountainside. He knew, perhaps because he wanted it to be so, that this would not be the last time they discussed this.

The world breathed its last blurry hum, and they slipped off to sleep. 


End file.
